Download The Sons of Guadalupe: The Vietnam era Generation and Their

The Sons of Guadalupe:
The Vietnam era Generation
And Their Journey Home
Michael R. Ornelas,
Chicano Studies Department
January 24, 2007
A report to the Mesa College Sabbatical Committee in partial fulfillment of sabbatical
requirements, Fall, 2006
“Two of the names that appear most often on the wall of the Vietnam Memorial in
Washington are Johnson and Rodriguez. These two names tell us something about the
composition of the U. S. military during the war, especially the combat units.”
Aztlan and Vietnam: Chicano and Chicana Experiences of the War, George Mariscal, ed.
Like all of the other major events of the 20th century, the Vietnam War reached
Guadalupe when John Varela arrived there on an early support mission for the advisors to
the Vietnamese government in 1963. His visit was brief, perhaps two weeks. He
characterized it as a Navy reconnaissance mission. But Varela’s first mission did not
involve combat, unlike the first Guadalupan to see combat, Rudy Razo who arrived in
July 1965, at a mere eighteen years old, just three months after the first major contingent
of 3,500 combat Marines had arrived in Vietnam on March 8, 1965. He had arrived at the
earliest stages of the war, when the United States had begun the shift from an advisory
role to a combat one. This early trickle of soldiers would shortly turn into a virtual river
of draftees and volunteers, peaking in 1968-1969. By the end of 1969, over 135 young
servicemen from Guadalupe had been drafted or joined voluntarily.
From Varela’s mission in 1963 to the fall of Saigon in 1975, to the rescue of the
crew of the S.S. Mayagüez, they were there. Varela had joined the Navy at the age of 17,
in between his junior and senior years in high school, along with two other young
Guadalupans: Clifford Sanchez and Sal Zubiate. Trained as a radioman, Varela was
aboard the USS Providence, The Flag Ship of the Commander of the Seventh Fleet, Vice-
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Admiral Thomas Moore. He recalled that a number of dignitaries climbed aboard
including U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge as well as Premier Ky
of South Vietnam as they steamed up the Saigon River accompanied by five high-speed
gunboats and a pair of B-26 fighter-bombers. All of this happened before President
Lyndon Johnson issued the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 4, 1964 that changed
the missions in Vietnam from an advisory assistance role to combat deployments.
They were there for every major stage of the war to the final disastrous
withdrawal from Saigon. Guadalupan Fred Cañez was sent from the U.S.S. Peoria off the
shores of Vietnam to help secure the American Embassy grounds and protect the
embassy staff and officers during the final evacuation of Saigon (soon after changed to
Ho Chi Minh City) and the collapse of the United States war effort before and on April
30th, 1975. Cañez and the few select men were given forty-eight hours to protect and
evacuate the staff and VIPs.
Over six hundred plane and helicopter flights filled with evacuees escaped
Vietnam during those turbulent last days as the North Vietnamese Army advanced past
the collapsing opposition and approached Saigon. Cañez remembered the chaotic
helicopter evacuations
and the multitudes of
Vietnamese citizens
trying to climb the
embassy walls and
scrambling to force their
way onto waiting
helicopters. Pilots grew
increasingly worried
about the weight of the
throngs forcing their way
Fred Cañez in 2006
on to the helicopters. Meanwhile, bullets were flying from the approaching North
Vietnamese Army and the rumble of the tanks grew louder and more ominous. Cañez
made it out safely and unhurt but recalls the pinging of bullets and incoming rocket fire
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all around him. He had just witnessed a monumental historical moment: the collapse of
the American war effort after ten years of brutal war. After he was airlifted from the
embassy grounds he found himself on the wrong ship, the U. S. S. Okinawa. Since no one
from the Peoria could account for his whereabouts, the men of his company and his
commanding officer thought he had been killed or left behind. But he was flown to the
right ship a few days later. He said they partied that night. His face appears briefly on the
news film of the momentous event seen around the world.
Just two weeks later Cañez found himself bound for the shores of Cambodia to
help retake the American container ship, the S.S. Mayagüez from the Khmer Rouge. The
crisis had begun on May 12, 1975 after the Cambodians seized the ship and held its crew
hostage. Cañez remembered the hasty preparations from Subic Bay in the Philippines and
the two-day journey aboard the U.S.S. Hancock to Southeast Asia. His unit was selected
because it had just participated in the Saigon evacuations and were then in training
exercises in Okinawa. By the time Cañez and his fellow Marines arrived, just one hour
before reaching its destination, they were informed that the captured men had been
released and a small battle had already decided the affair. It was the last official battle of
the American involvement in the Vietnam War. Neither Varela nor Razo could have ever
anticipated it would end this way. From the early days to the inglorious end, they were
there. From Guadalupe to Vietnam. From Varela to Cañez.
According to figures disseminated by the United States government a significant
percentage of the overall casualties in the Vietnam War occurred between 1967 and 1969.
Of the total of 58,178 killed in the war, around 39,000 were killed during those three
years. From California alone, 5,572 men would be killed-in-action during the war. Over
1,300 are still missing-in-action.
In 1965 Guadalupe was a
town with around 2,500
residents. This small rural town
in northern Santa Barbara
County would send 137 men of
its own young men to help fight
the war. All of them were young,
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